grants.(Immigration) In 1875, 1882, and 1892, acts passed by Congress provided for the examination of immigrants and for the exclusion from the U.S. of convicts, polygamists, prostitutes, persons suffering from contagious diseases, and persons liable to become public charges. The Alien Contract Labor Laws of 1885, 1887, 1888, and 1891 prohibited the immigration to the U.S. of persons entering the country to work under contracts made before their arrival; professional actors, artists, singers, lecturers, educators, ministers, and personal and domestic servants were exempt from this provision.(Immigration) Immigrant skilled laborers, under these laws, were permitted to enter the U.S. to work in new industries. A diplomatic agreement made in 1907 by the U.S. and Japan provided that the Japanese government would not issue passports to Japanese laborers intending to enter the U.S.; under the terms of this agreement, the U.S. government refrained until 1924 from enacting laws excluding Japanese aliens.In 1917 Congress passed an immigration law that enlarged the classes of aliens excludable from the U.S.; its basic provisions were, with some changes, retained in later revisions of the immigration law. It imposed a literacy test and included an Asiatic Barred Zone to shut out Asians. Aliens unable to meet minimum mental, moral, physical, and economic standards were excluded, as were anarchists and other so-called "subversives". The Anarchist Act of 1918 expanded the provisions for the exclusion of subversive aliens.(Immigration)After World War I, a marked increase in racism and the growth of isolationist sentiment in the U.S. led to demands for further restrictive legislation. In 1921 a congressional statute provided for a quota system for immigrants, whereby the number of aliens of any nationality admitted to the U.S. in a year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of foreign-born residents of that nationality living in the U.S. in 1910. Th...
